Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

DEVELOPMENT: Brazilians Hold First National Social Forum

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 6 2003 (IPS) - Deprived for the first time of hosting the World Social Forum, Brazil’s social organisations are holding a national debate this week on their work and their future.

The first Brazilian Social Forum is running Thursday through Sunday in Belo Horizonte, the capital of the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, 10 months after the Workers’ Party (PT), accused by many of abandoning its leftist ideals and adopting neo-liberal, free-market economic policies, became the governing party.

Most of the activities at the Brazilian Social Forum, such as seminars and workshops, have been proposed ”with absolute autonomy” by social movements and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which means some are likely to criticise the government of former trade unionist President Luiz Inacio ”Lula” da Silva for what analysts describe as its move towards the centre.

However, the idea underlying the four-day gathering is to debate ”what the social movements and NGOs are doing, their visions of and proposals for the future, which are not limited to one government term,” Salete Valesan, the head of the Paulo Freire Institute on education and one of the organisers of the meeting, told IPS.

Some 23,000 people are registered to directly take part in the formal activities of the Brazilian Social Forum. But events open to the public may draw upwards of 40,000 people, said Valesan.

A march through the streets and city squares of downtown Belo Horizonte will kick off the forum, which will also include cultural events.

The southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, hosted the first three annual editions of the World Social Forum, organised as a kind of counterweight to the World Economic Forum held every year in the Swiss Alpine resort town of Davos.

However, the next World Social Forum will be held in the city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) in western India, in January.

The Brazilian Social Forum is modelled after the World Social Forum, although lacking the global event’s enormous crowds and numerous foreign delegations.

On Friday, Saturday and Sunday mornings, six large conferences will feature four speakers each, as proposed by the organising committee, based on three central themes: imperialism, ”the Brazil we have and the Brazil we want”, and social movements.

The first conference will focus on ”the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas), WTO (World Trade Organisation) and external dependency: economic strategies of domination”.

”Armed globalisation and militarisation of Latin America”, ”overcoming neo-liberalism”, human rights, social movements in their relations with the state, and the work of social movements today will be the issues debated at the other conferences.

Among the keynote speakers will be internationally renowned theologian Leonardo Boff, the president of Brazil’s Central Workers Union Luis Marinho, and one of the leaders of the Landless Movement (MST), Gilmar Mauro. The head of Bolivia’s coca-growers, parliamentary Deputy Evo Morales, is also expected to participate.

In the afternoon, the workshops and other activities organised by Brazilian NGOs and social movements will focus on a range of questions, from educational and gender issues to democratisation of the media. ”The meeting’s diversity makes room for everyone,” said Valesan.

The international small farmers movement Via Campesina, represented in Brazil by the MST, has been allotted a camp for 700 to 800 people, the MST coordinator in Minas Gerais, Ademar Suptitz, told IPS.

Besides leading several workshops and cultural activities, the MST will organise ”some kind of street demonstration,” he said. ”At this moment, popular movements are waning, which makes it difficult to draw people out for large demonstrations,” but without them, ”there will be no major changes in society,” Suptitz argued.

In his view, Brazil, Latin America’s giant, ”for the first time has a leftist president, without popular mobilisations,” and with a conservative economic policy that is leading to recession. But, he said, ”it is still possible to transform the government, although that will depend on whether or not people organise.”

The Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analyses (IBASE), one of the organisers of the World Social Forum, is planning several seminars on the ”post neo-liberal agenda”, food security, and drug policy.

IBASE is producing three books summarising the third World Social Forum, held last January.

The five books summing up and compiling the conferences, panels, seminars, debates and roughly 1,300 workshops that took place in the first three World Social Forums, in Porto Alegre, are to be ready by next January’s global gathering in Mumbai.